Board Thread:DMC5 Spoilers/@comment-28568301-20190312031106/@comment-30287552-20190604211358

DMC2 Dante would also probably defeat Sparda.

The final mission's description implies that Dante has surpassed Sparda ("the hunter shall surpass all who came before him"). And we know this is referring to Sparda because it comes immediately after a conversation with Lucia about Sparda going in to fight Argosax, and Dante following his father's footsteps.

Not only that, in the Volume 2 novel, DMC2 Dante in his regular state effortlessly defeated Mundus from the alternate universe the Beastheads teleported them to, and that version of Mundus was strongly implied to be more powerful than the original Mundus.